Vision Dixie: Foresight, not hindsight, 20-20

Salt Lake Tribune Editorial
Article Last Updated: 01/14/2008 10:47:25 AM MST

When you travel in a straight line through the Salt Lake Valley, it's like driving in circles. 

You pass look-alike strip malls, identical bigbox stores and cookie-cutter housing developments nearly everywhere you go. Walkable, livable neighborhoods, where a trip to the market or drug store or park doesn't require driving a car, are precious and few. And despite the gradual acceptance of basic smart-growth principles, change is slow in coming and difficult to achieve. 

It's too late for the valley to easily save itself from the air pollution, endless concrete corridors and mind-numbing conformity that decades of pell-mell, poorly planned development have wrought. The damage is already done. 

But it's not too late for fast-growing but still-bucolic Washington County, where, by comparison, public officials have a clean slate to work with. 

They're also lucky to have a blueprint, a comprehensive regional plan for doing things right, called Vision Dixie. The plan is neither pro-growth nor anti-growth. It promotes smart growth. You can read the report on-line at www.visiondixie.org. 

Open spaces. Walkable communities. Mixed-use neighborhoods. Inter-connectivity. Public transportation. Strictly defined industrial and retail corridors. Infill development. Water conservation and air quality preservation measures. A mix of housing types to meet all needs. The plan is a virtual arsenal for the battle against seemingly unstoppable sprawl, which is already impacting the area around St. George, the Washington County seat. 

The grassroots regional planning document took two years to produce, and includes input from 3,000 residents, including developers, builders, transportation officials, planners, elected officeholders, environmentalists, conservationists, business owners and regular folks. 

Vision Dixie brought everyone to the table for brainstorming sessions, and asked them to envision their future. And they decided to break from the past with a steely-eyed resolve. 

Now it's time to put the plan into action. Vision Dixie's implementation committee will pitch the plan at town council and county government meetings. Officials can use it to assess their situation, gauge their progress and implement the planning and zoning changes needed to make the dream a reality. 

Residents and stakeholders of the county have given their government a wonderful tool. Now it's up to public officials to use it.